


Merry Tunes

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Multiverse, Any, Getting lost on YouTube."</p><p>Rodney and Jeannie are YouTube cover artists going by MerryTunes, and their biggest rival is HotLicksCowlicks. Who is now at their school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Tunes

“You’ve been watching YouTube for hours.” Jeannie plopped down on the couch beside Rodney and elbowed him aside, snatched the laptop. “That can’t be healthy. Also, I’ve done all my homework, so it’s my turn.”  
  
“Have you seen this guy?” Rodney demanded, jabbing at the screen. “This - this HotLicksCowlicks. He’s stalking us.”  
  
“So you decided to stalk him right back?” Jeannie peered at the frozen image on the screen of the guitarist, wearing a Harvard hoodie (he looked about the same age as her, a couple of years younger than Rodney, so not old enough for college). The boy had bright hazel eyes and spiky dark hair and was cute, to say the least.  
  
“I wanted to check out the competition. See how many hits his latest video got? Almost as many as ours. We did a cover of Star Wars, and he did a cover of Star Wars. Little punk face is even dressed like Han Solo!”  
  
Jeannie pressed play, and the video resumed. “Well, it was May the Fourth a couple of days ago. A bunch of people published Star Wars-related content.”  
  
“It’s not just Star Wars,” Rodney said. “Look, we posted Bohemian Rhapsody, and two days later he comes out with Love Of My Life.” He pressed another video on the playlist for her to see.  
  
Jeannie was impressed. Of course she was impressed - the boy was a brilliant guitarist. But she was missing the point entirely. The point was that this punk, whoever he was, was stalking them and directly competing with them and enough was enough. Rodney and Jeannie worked hard on their videos. Damn hard. They arranged the songs together, and Rodney would never admit it, but they also designed - and sewed - her costumes together. Rodney was never in the videos. He was the director. While he was a perfectly competent pianist (better than competent, his teacher’s comments about his playing ‘lacking heart’ aside), he preferred to be behind the scenes. Also, his demographic research suggested that an attractive female pianist in inventive costumes would draw a bigger audience, especially if they did nerdy things like cover video game themes and themes from other science fiction and fantasy shows and films. Nerdy girls were much more attractive than nerdy boys on the Internet these days.  
  
“Mer, you’re just being paranoid,” Jeannie said, but then, when the song ended, the artist himself popped up with the usual ‘thanks for watching my video’ and ‘please subscribe’ epilogue, and then he added, “This was for you, MerryTunes. You’re amazing.”  
  
“See! Stalking us.”  
  
“Not in a creepy way, though. He seems nice enough.”  
  
“I don’t trust that smile,” Rodney said, scowling at his laptop.  
  
“He’s cute,” Jeannie said, and Rodney was pretty sure it was just to wind him up, but he spluttered in protest anyway, and she snatched the laptop from him, and that was that. 

*

  
It took Rodney about 2.5 seconds to realize that the new student in his AP calculus class was none other than HotLicksCowlicks himself. The cowlicks gave it away.  
  
In real life, HotLicksCowlicks was John Sheppard, and he was the same age as Jeannie, which said something about his math skills, if he was in Rodney’s class (not that Jeannie wasn’t also in the same class, because she was a McKay, and she was brilliant).  
  
In real life, John Sheppard had an unfairly sexy little grin and long, dexterous hands, and every girl in the class sighed when he crossed the room, because he also had a great ass. Didn’t mean Rodney wasn’t going to kill him for sharking the MerryTunes YouTube fanbase, and then John Sheppard had the temerity to sit beside Jeannie.  
  
And when the teacher’s back was turned, John leaned over to Jeannie and said, “I love your YouTube videos. You’re amazing.”  
  
Jeannie smiled at him and opened her mouth, and Rodney kicked her swiftly in the ankle, because John Sheppard was the competition. Rodney wasn’t usually a violent person, and he’d never resort to physical force to make a point, but he was a competitive person, and he’d never met a problem he couldn’t research into submission.

So research he did. He watched all of John’s YouTube videos over and over again, searching for anything he could use. All of John’s videos had a low production quality - no costumes, no set, no halfway decent directing. He had good sound and editing equipment, but by all appearances he performed every song in his room. He didn’t seem to choose his outfits with much care, mostly wore jeans and t-shirts and the occasional hoodie (always a Harvard hoodie, and judging by how smart he was, Harvard wasn’t necessarily wishful thinking). He never sang. He played everything from pop hits (arranged artfully on his guitar, and he sounded like he had three hands with how fast and how intricately he could play) to classic rock, all on acoustic. But he rearranged classical songs on electric guitar, and he really did have amazing technical skill.  
  
John’s newest video, the Star Wars tribute, was filmed in a new room. It must have been in his new house here in town. Rodney almost didn’t realize it was a different room because John had the same Johnny Cash poster tacked to the wall behind him.  
  
What surprised Rodney was that there were no Johnny Cash covers.  
  
Until he found one. It had barely any hits, because it was old, about two years old, and John’s break-out video was a cover of Carry On Wayward Son (aimed, no doubt, at the hordes to Supernatural fans who roamed the Internet armed with GIFs for everything) that he’d uploaded about six months later.  
  
The video was different from all of John’s other videos in many respects. He wasn’t in his bedroom - he was sitting in what looked like the master bedroom of whatever house he lived in. And he was wearing a button-down shirt and dark slacks. His sleeves were rolled up, the collar unbuttoned, and a dark jacket and tie were discarded on the bed beside him.  
  
And he was singing.  
  
The Johnny Cash version of Hurt.  
  
Rodney hurt just listening to it, because he could see John’s hands were shaking, and his voice choked off in a couple of places because he was trying not to cry, and Rodney wondered what the hell had happened to John right before he’d sat down to perform this song for an uncaring YouTube universe.  
  
He put out inquiries at school, among his cohorts in the science and math department, who stayed far away from the likes of John Sheppard and his long legs and his friends on the track team (the beautiful and fearless Teyla and the massive and stoic Ronon). Radek and Peter and Miko asked around, and they came back with news. John Sheppard was one of _those_ Sheppards. Sheppard Utilities. Owned at least half of the utilities on the East Coast, one way or another. His older brother, Dave, was set to inherit the family business and was going to school at Harvard. That explained the hoodie. John was smart, handsome, funny, popular.  
  
And his mother was dead. Died two years ago, when John was fourteen.  
  
That video made so much more sense, now. Dark suit. Master bedroom. All the hurt. It must have been posted around the time of the funeral.  
  
Rodney’s and Jeannie’s parents were so absorbed in their own work and their own brilliance that they never had time for their children, so Rodney couldn’t imagine hurting over them like John was obviously hurting over his mother. But if Rodney had lost Jeannie -  
  
He came around the corner in the cafeteria, and there was John, sitting with Jeannie. Jeannie’s friends were clustered near her, watching John with wide eyes and giggling with each other.  
  
“I have to ask, though,” John said, “why are you called Merry Tunes?”  
  
Jeannie thought Rodney’s one-sided rivalry with John was stupid. The Internet was a big place. They could share fans. Jeannie was wrong.

“I don’t do the videos alone,” Jeannie said. “Meredith helps me. We both do the arranging, and we both design the costumes, and we sew them together, but Meredith directs the videos.”’

John nodded earnestly. “Is Meredith your sister?”

Jeannie’s friends all giggled.

Rodney gritted his teeth. “I’m her brother,” he said. “I prefer to go by Rodney. But she named the YouTube account when my back was turned.”

John turned to him, and Rodney’s heart did something funny at the smile that crossed John’s face. “Hey, we’re in calculus together, right?”

“Yes.”

“You play piano too?”

“He plays at least as well as I do,” Jeannie said.

“Better,” Rodney corrected.

“I’ve been trying to convince Jeannie to collaborate with me,” John said, “on a special video. She said she had to ask her production partner. What’s the hold up? And what can I do to convince you to play with me?” The way he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows at Rodney made Rodney’s pulse jump.

Nope. Not an innuendo or a come-hither. But he did want to play with John, all right. Because the bastard was talented and sexy as hell and Rodney had watched his hands for hours, knew what those hands could do.

Rodney said, “Can you handle Rachmaninov?”

Jeannie choked on her drink.

John grinned. “Bring it on.”

Rodney wasn’t sure how he’d gone from hating John to wanting to kiss him stupid, but he’d take what he could get, because John was one complicated puzzle, and Rodney had never met a puzzle he couldn’t solve, and the best fun he ever had was unwrapping the clues.


End file.
